CHARLOTTESVILLE — Registration is open for the first of 11 free online courses the University of Virginia will offer this year.

The non-credit courses known as MOOCs, for massive open online courses, are offered through a partnership with Coursera. They include business and education courses, as well as politics professor Larry Sabato’s course on John F. Kennedy.

Among new courses is English professor Bruce Holsinger’s “Plagues, Witches and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction,” which will begin Oct. 15 and is a version of the “Historical Fictions” seminar he teaches at U.Va.

Holsinger is the author of “A Burnable Book,” a historical novel set in London in 1385, scheduled to be published by HarperCollins early next year.

The course will feature recorded discussions with contemporary writers of historical fiction, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks, and the opportunity to follow up with the novelists in online forums and chats.

More information is available at www.coursera.org. Here is the schedule for U.Va.’s courses: